Cripple
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Johnny survives and ends up living at his parents' house in a wheelchair.
1. Chapter 1

What happened was this. Pony and Dally had come to visit me in the hospital and I just passed out. I was in so much pain. I never knew there could be pain like this. They were giving me stuff for it, drugs and stuff but it didn't work that great. It's third degree burns, and that's the worst kind of pain. It aches and throbs and stings and does everything all at once, and nothing stops it. I couldn't really take it, and Pony was all shaken up about the rumble and Dally was being cool like always, but kind of funny, too. Kind of like he was holding it together but that he wouldn't for much longer.

Laying there, feeling like I was dying, I thought how useless all that fighting was. I used to think it mattered, rumbles and stuff, that it made some kind of difference. But then I saw that it didn't. It was no good. I tried to tell them but they were all kind of wrapped up in their own thing, I don't know. So was I. I felt the pain going through me like steel bars or something. And I thought I knew about pain. But getting hit, even getting beat up like that time in the lot, it didn't compare to this.

So I passed out, and they left. Dally took off, robbed some convenience store with that empty gun of his. Pony kind of wandered home, all bloody and bruised from the rumble and kind of sick, too. He goes home and tells Darry and Soda and Steve that I died. He thought I died. He told them Dally had lost it and was gonna blow. But Darry knew Pony was all out of it and everything and he didn't really believe him. So he calls the hospital and they tell him I didn't die, I just passed out, and that it wasn't good but whatever. It wasn't good. Then Dally calls with the cops after him and everything and he says, "Johnny's dead," and Darry tells him that I wasn't.

So about a week or two later Pony comes back and visits. I wasn't really feeling much better, maybe a little.

"Johnny," he says, like he can't believe I'm even alive.

"Hey," I say, my voice all weak. It was cause of the smoke inhalation. It burned my vocal chords or something.

"I thought…I thought you were dead," he says, and I don't know what to say, really. What do you say to that?

"Well, you were out of it that night," I say, and he nods, and kind of laughs a little.

"Yeah, I was. I was like, almost crazy that night. But listen, things are getting better at home. Me and Darry and Soda, we're cool now," he says, and I nod.

"How's Dally?" I say, looking out the window. It's sunny, and I thought of how I wouldn't be able to do all this shit anymore, like playing football and running and walking and being normal.

"Okay, I guess. He's in the slammer again,"

So things had mostly worked out. Pony got to stay with his brothers and things are going better for him. Dally's okay. He can handle the slammer. I had to go to court for running away and for killing the soc, but it was manslaughter. I really wasn't that worried. I'd be in a wheelchair. Were they gonna put me in some jail or juvenile detention center in a wheelchair?

I was kind of getting a little better. The pain wasn't so bad. I was getting bored. Nothing to do in here but think. And what I was thinking about was what would happen when I got out of here. I'd have to go and stay at my house with my parents. I wouldn't be able to take off like I used to. And they wouldn't be able to take care of me or nothing. My parents were…I don't know. They just sucked. They couldn't stand having a kid before, now how'd they like to have one that's crippled?


	2. Chapter 2

I wasn't really going home anytime soon. I had third degree burns and my back was broke. Every day there were the dressing changes for the burns that were on my back and neck and chest and arms. Even though they gave me pain medicine before they did it I still gritted my teeth cause of the pain. And you know, it was fine to lay in a hospital bed, not really fine but it was like not the real world. I'd think of the burns and try not to think of my back and how I'd never walk again, not even on crutches.

Everyone came and visited a lot. Almost every day someone came, so I had that to look forward to. If it was one of the gang they could stay as long as they wanted, but they had their lives to get back to. I could see it, and I kinda felt like I wasn't so much a part of it anymore. It was sad. I thought things were worse before, but they kinda were. Like, I was so scared all the time and I wanted to kill myself, I really did. Now I know that it ain't so long, 16 years, but it woulda been better if I wasn't crippled.

I knew the routine here well enough. Nurses or the nurses' aids changed the beds in the morning and then there was breakfast and then the terrible dressing changes. I dreaded it, man, really. The pain medicine was nice, though. It was morphine. It made me feel pretty good, like nothing really mattered but in a good way. It was kind of like this fake happiness. I wished they'd just leave me alone, give me that drug and leave me alone, but I knew that the bandages had to be changed and everything. I knew. Then after that that's when people would visit. I'd just stare out the window and wait.

"Johnny," It was Ponyboy and I was kind of sleeping, the morphine wears off fast but still, I get tired sometimes with nothing to do.

"Hey," I said. By this time I didn't have that oxygen tube thing in my nose. That had started to bother me, too. It dries out your nose, and I'd get nose bleeds sometimes. But I didn't need it anymore.

"Listen," he says, pulling up a chair. He smells like outside, like fresh air and cars and fast food. All I could smell in here was alcohol and sickness and dead air, nothing moving. I wanted to go outside so badly. But I just turned to Ponyboy and listened to whatever he was gonna say.

"We have to go to court this week," he said. The hearing about him getting put into a foster home or staying with Darry had already happened. I knew what he was talking about. He was talking about the one where me and him had to go for runnin' away and I had to go for manslaughter. Man, I was nervous. Maybe they threw crippled kids into reform school or jail right alongside the regular kids, and then I wouldn't stand a chance. Not that I would have anyway. I knew what could happen in those places, Curly Shepard had told us plenty of times.

"Yeah," I said, although I had no idea of how I was gonna get there, or if they'd even let me leave the hospital.

"Darry's gonna talk to the doctors and everything and tell them you have court, so maybe they'll let you leave for the day or something," he said, and it would be nice to leave here for a little while. Too bad it had to be to court.

"Yeah, okay," I said, thinking about it, not like I had a choice. I just hoped I didn't get sent to jail or something. Well, maybe Dally would be there. If he was I'd be fine.

We let that subject go for a little while. I knew he wouldn't get in any trouble. Adults liked him, all kinds of adults. Teachers, cops, judges, all of them. They sure didn't like me. Well, me and him did save those kids at the church. That should look good, it'd look better than knifing that kid to death in the park.

He talked a little bit more about school and stuff, and how Cherry actually talked to him at school the other day. I listened and didn't say much. I was glad things were working out for him, and I was glad he would be mostly okay from all of this. Not me, but maybe I didn't deserve to be. I killed that kid and I should have to pay for that.


	3. Chapter 3

When you're in a hospital for so long you get used to the routines. It's almost like that's all a hospital is, routines. The medication always comes at certain times, and meals always come at certain times, and the things that happen happen at the same times every day. Every day for weeks and weeks and weeks, it's been the same.

My life before this, before killing the soc and running away and landing in the hospital, there were no routines in that life. There was nothing that was the same from one day to the next. So routines are funny things, kind of hard to get used to at first, then hard to let go of.

I always knew if there was a change in the routine for any reason, and when I was getting woken up at like five thirty I knew something was up. It was one of the night nurses shaking me, saying my name softly in the dark room.

"Johnny, Johnny, wake up," It was like a voice in a dream, and ever since the fire I've been having dreams that seem so real, and it isn't anything crazy, it's just me in my old life hanging out at the lot or something like that, walking around with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jean jacket, no big deal. But it seems so real, so much like it used to be, that when I wake up it's hard to adjust to how things are, how things have changed.

"Huh?" I said, opening my eyes, trying to focus on her.

"Here," she said, holding out the pain medication, two white little pills filled with so much power. She had the pills and she had a glass of water but I felt dread at that, because those little pills were always before the dressing changes and it was way too early for it. But I didn't question her or demand to know why things were different today, because I knew that court hearing was coming up. I figured they'd change the routine of that day so I could go to court, and then end up getting hauled into juvenile hall, and I'd just lay on some bed all the time because I couldn't walk, and the burns would get all infected and then I'd die anyway.

I took the pills and waited for them to kick in. When they kick in, man, you can't imagine it. I know why people do heroin or something out on the streets. It makes you feel happy and it makes you feel like whatever is wrong doesn't matter, it makes you float away on a cloud, the pain still there but not exactly the same, not something that has any power to hurt you anymore.

Then it was time for the dressing changes, and I closed my eyes and winced because even through morphine it still hurt a little. It was still the night shift. There were three shifts for nurses, it was day, evening, and night. This dressing change thing was usually done on days. But I knew court would start at like nine in the morning, so all this had to get done early. But I managed to go back to sleep when it was done, even though I was starting to feel nervous about court.

The food here was kind of, I don't know, bland. Breakfast was oatmeal and orange juice. But I ate it. They tell you all this stuff when you're a patient, like how if you're hurt, injured and everything with all these burns, that your body can't heal itself unless you eat protein and everything. So I ate at every meal. Before, when I lived at home, there wasn't food around all that much. Not enough, really. My parents bought a lot of alcohol but not so much food. I'd eat at Ponyboy's house, or Two-Bit's, or Steve's, wherever, but a lot of times I just didn't eat anything because there was nothing.

When the day shift came on the day nurse was all business. The day nurses, they're more edgy and busy than the other shifts. Sometimes at night the nurses are half asleep. Not really, but it's all quiet and they have to tiptoe around everywhere and whisper, and it's just different. But on days it's so loud and the nurses are just, I don't know, things are more hectic for them. So I'm like dozing off after breakfast and this day nurse comes in with a suit. A suit.

"Johnny," she said, and I gazed at that suit, it was dark blue, navy, with a white shirt and a tie. Would this suit make the judge think I hadn't killed anybody? I knew where it had come from, too. Darry. Darry would be the only one who would have thought that I needed it. I'd never worn a suit before.


End file.
